Letter to the editor: Climate change is not anything new

News flash, people, not only is climate change real, but it has been going on forever!

I'm old enough to remember when our weather patterns were different than they are today, but I'm also smart enough to know that driving my SUV isn't causing it. The sun, not coal-fired power plants, is the main driving force behind our climate, whatever it happens to be. The earth wobbles somewhat as it rotates on its axis, and the earth's orbit around the sun is not uniform, either. And the sun's energy output varies, too, ergo, climate change.

The earth gets warmer, the earth gets cooler. Glaciers grow and advance over the earth, and glaciers melt and retreat; sea levels rise, and sea levels fall, and it has nothing to do with where your house thermostat is set.

My wife and I visited Jamestown, Va., this past December, site of the first permanent English settlement on the James River. Exhibits there told of how archeologists determined that thousands of years before Capt. John Smith set up housekeeping, the sea level was 100 feet lower than it is today. And there weren't even any smoke-belching factories then.

Who's to say that current sea levels, temperatures, rain patterns, etc, are what's supposed to be “normal”? Was the Sahara always a desert? Old maps show times in the past when the Northwest Passage was ice-free and open to ships. If it happens now, it's not a unique event in the history of the earth caused by jet planes making the polar ice cap melt.

And that evil CO2, carbon dioxide, supposedly responsible for climate change? It's considered just a trace gas in the atmosphere. People are getting rich by scaring you.

So relax, people, and go with the flow, climate change that is. And remember, a warmer earth is more life-friendly than a cold earth.